Dagmar

​ A group of young sheep bounce away, giddy to be on the mountainside after a stint in the barn’s winter quarters. Dagmar watches them with a content smile. “After seeing how happy animals are outside, how could you keep them locked up?” she says. It’s March in western Norway and I am on Dagmar’s farm.​The 35 year old has owned and operated this farm since she was just 19. Dagmar’s mom died when she was 18 and she inherited a summer home in Germany. This she sold so she would have money to buy a place to keep her horses. The farm up the hill from her father’s farm, which had previously been her great-aunt’s, went up for sale right about this time, and she couldn’t pass it up. It’s been hers ever since.​ The first five years she had dairy cows on the farm for income, which ended up being too demanding on her with the constant milking. Now she raises sheep for meat and wool, cows and ponies mainly for breeding, and keeps horses, goats and chickens for fun. Usually farmers have just one breed of sheep and make their money off their meat. However, both of Dagmar’s parent’s were intellectuals, her father a history professor and her mother a physician. When Dagmar’s father Magnar took over the family farm, her mother wanted different kinds of sheep for visual variety. Dagmar blames this on her mother being a city woman and wanting to just cuddle sheep. “It’s probably where I get it from,” she says. So they had 3 different breeds when Dagmar was growing up, the usual Norwegian White, the Scottish Blackface, and the Norwegian Short Tail. ​

Dagmar's house in the left foreground, & her farm on the hillside.

Dagmar's father Magnar.

Now Dagmar has nine different breeds. She enjoys breeding, and the idea of trying to “keep the good bits while selecting away the bad bits.” The science and strategy is what she finds fascinating, and for her is what makes farming more than just “feeding and shoveling shit.” Her cows are rare breeds so the calves are sold to other farmers to introduce new blood into their herds. She is also very particular about who she sells the ponies to, as she wants them to go to good forever homes. She has sold about 110 ponies, and she thinks that only about ten of them haven’t gone to the perfect homes. Those of course are the ones she remembers though; she wants to do right by all her animals.

Two years ago Dagmar and Stein-Torald, her boyfriend of 12 years, built a new house on the farm where they now live with their 8 year old daughter, Viktoria. The farm is entirely run by Dagmar while Stein-Torald has a taxi and truck business. Next to their modern house stands the original farm house, a 200 year old cabin. It was built by a widow who owned forest and used the wood to built her house and the church in the local town of Vevring. Dagmar likes that a woman started this place, and that one still owns it. ​

Viktoria smiles in the midst of a sheep pen while the spring shearing is happening.

Viktoria loves growing up on a farm and being around all the animals. I ask Viktoria what her favorite animal is. Horses, she says indignantly. How could I not know that, her face reads. But really all the animals are her favorite, she says. But horses first. She’s afraid of the hens though. And the cows that have horns. Also the small white fluffy dog of a family friend, because it jumped in bed with her once and woke her up sniffing her face. Then I ask her what she wants to do when she grows up. Viktoria points down. This, she says. Who else will take over? I have to, she says, but I also want to. Her enthusiasm is endearing, and I hope that whatever she ends up doing, that she is happy. Perhaps the tradition of female farmer will be passed on to her generation.

Stein-Torald and Viktoria dance in the kitchen.

Viktoria does Stein-Torald's facepaint for a Carnival party.

Dagmar and Stein-Torald at a Carnival party.

Appropriately themed guest room sheets.

The family's boardgames include a great twist on the class Battleship, which is instead called Battle Sheep.

Dagmar has many ideas for the farm. She would like to eventually be able to raise her sheep just for their wool and for breeding. She doesn’t like sending them to slaughter, but is also practical enough to know she can’t raise and sustain all of the sheep that are born. A couple times of year she still sends out select sheep to slaughter. To minimize the size of this group, she has lowered the total number of sheep that she breeds each year. When I was on the farm, there were 33 pregnant sheep that season, a vastly lower amount than there could have been with her flock of about 200 sheep. This has also resulted in the Norwegian government lowering the amount of financial aid she receives because she is below production for her herd size. “Money isn’t everything” she says. ​

“This is what happens when you have intellectual parents and they teach you to think for yourself. ​You don’t just do what everyone else does"

Dagmar also sees an opportunity with her sheeps’ wool. She would like to transition completely away from meat production, so that none of her sheep go to slaughter. Any yarn made from these never-to-be-slaughtered sheep could be marketed to animal lovers as “vegetarian friendly,” and even get certified as cruelty-free. However, vegans do not use wool in the interest of animal welfare, and there are legitimate concerns about animal treatment in mass industrial agriculture. Some vegans, though, fear that shearing under any circumstance is traumatic to sheep no matter how well they are looked after. Dagmar knows her sheep intimately and takes great care with the process of shearing. She sees how freeing a trim is for the flock when their coats have grown so bulky. Sheep have been bred intentionally to maximize what humans want out of them, including higher wool yield. Historically sheep shed their wool for the summer, just like many other animals. But as humans intervened in the form of breeding, the ability to shed wasn’t as necessary, and was often eventually lost. Therefore, most breeds today do not naturally shed and require shearing to prepare them for warmer months. When done mindfully, shearing is an integral part of responsibly raising sheep.

Spring Shearing

Dagmar also sees her rare breeds as a great selling point for natural color yarn. Instead of sending her wool to be part of mass collective yarn, she would like to send her wool to be spun independently. Then she could sell her natural color yarn in skeins labeled with the individual sheep the wool comes from and their breed. This would connect the consumer intimately to Dagmar and her beloved sheep. Currently all wool that is collected by the Norwegian government, one of the main resources for small farmers, is sent to a mill in England where it is bleached and then dyed. “Natural wools are often produced in Iceland and Scotland,” says Dagmar, “so why not in Norway?” “This is what happens when you have intellectual parents and they teach you to think for yourself. You don’t just do what everyone else does,” Dagmar says with a mischievous smile.

Dagmar walks through the outside feeder.

Some of the hay bought from the Netherlands.

Even with all Dagmar’s novel ideas, the challenges of being a small scale farmer in Norway are visibly increasing due to climate change. The summer of 2017, the year before I visited, it rained almost every day, a particularly wet season. Precipitation is projected to surge across Norway as the westerly winds blow over an increasingly warmer ocean, and that is a huge deal. Hay production for the country’s livestock industry was already greatly affected in 2017. A string of about five dry days at the peak of grass growth is required to make hay. Dagmar was forced to cut and roll her hay while wet and not at its peak. Therefore the nutrient content is low, the animals need to consume a higher volume just to get the nutrients they need, and Dagmar ultimately needed more hay than she produced. It was the same across the country. Faced with this, the large scale farms in Norway bought up all the domestic hay production, leaving small scale Norwegian farmers to buy from further and further away. Dagmar bought hay from the Netherlands to make it through the winter.

"I love being a farmer"

​ Regardless of all the challenges, Dagmar is still sparkly-eyed about farming. Every day she has a smile on her face. She looks out over her land, down to the fjord and over to the mountains and is certain she lives in the most beautiful place on earth. “I love being a farmer,” she smiles. ◈​ ​

Dagmar and Viktoria ride up to the house from the barn after the evening feeding.

Dagmar fills buckets with water for each of different pens. When I left she was just getting the barn fitted with an automatic watering system.

You can follow Dagmar and her animals, as well as her ethical wool project! She posts regularly, and in English, on Instagram as @stall_gryta. There is also a Norwegian language website she has started about her wool: www.ullgryta.com, and you can donate to her on a Norwegian crowdfunding site here: www.spleis.no/project/75916.